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Soppangheid for Kaaps: Power, Creolisation and Kaaps Afrikaans

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Soppangheid for Kaaps: Power, Creolisation and Kaaps Afrikaans Multilingual Margins 2016, 3(2): 73-85 73 Soppangheid for Kaaps: Power, creolisation and Kaaps Afrikaans Hein Willemse University of Pretoria Correspondence to: [email protected] Abstract In this contribution, the dignity of speakers of Cape Afrikaans (Kaaps) is discussed with reference to the need for bi-dialectic tuition at school and Afrikaans poetry written in the Cape eye dialect. It is argued here that, besides Standard Afrikaans, a greater awareness of language varieties must be cultivated in education and the media so that learners develop the ability to control a variety of language registers. Further the manifestation of Kaaps, as eye dialect, is discussed at the hand of poetry examples. Here it is found that poets often stereotypically affirm topics in their poetry written in dialect format. The hope is expressed that the dignity of Kaaps Afrikaans in poetry can be attained with multiple rhetorical strategies. The soppangheid, dignity, of Kaaps is not only a linguistic issue, but can also serve as a confirmation of the dignity of all Afrikaans speakers. INTRODUCTION extensively discussed at those events. The same applies to my previously The 2012 symposium on Kaaps closely published contributions on the topic, for matches a few other events where similar example issues such as the development matters were discussed. I am thinking of of a creolised society and linguistic the Roots Symposium of 2009, as well hybridity, the establishment of Standard as the symposium of Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Afrikaans as a conscious ethnic construct Prah’s Centre for Advanced Studies of and my call for a “more multi-faceted African Society (CASAS) which took Afrikaans”.1 Yet, these matters are place in January 2011 and of which applicable as background to the matters the proceedings were published in to be discussed here. Initially, I discuss Afrikaans as well as English. I shall the need for dignity for Kaaps Afrikaans thus not repeat the aspects which were and the necessity for bi-dialectic methods 1 Compare among others my unpublished contributions “Verandering en toekoms: om ’n kreoolse Afrikaans te bedink” (2009) and “Om kreools te wees: Achmat Davids en die geskiedenis van Afrikaans” (2012), as well as the published article “Om ’n veelkantiger Afrikaans te bedink” (2012). © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 74 WILLEMSE of tuition at school. In the second part of system and formal spheres of usage my presentation I will broadly discuss the attained over the past century, are manifestation of Kaaps in the Afrikaans indeed impressive. While I make this literature. In closing I argue that the statement without irony, I must add a promotion of the dignity of spoken Kaaps qualification. These standardisation Afrikaans does not necessarily require processes were not always guided by the informal orthographies which we see linguistic considerations. Think of the in dialect poetry. active dutchification and germanisation of Afrikaans and the language family metaphor which reveal an underlying INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: eurocentrism, an ideology which STANDARD AFRIKAANS considered non-white speakers to be inferior. Later an ethnically chauvinistic I would like to first make a few state advantaged and supported the introductory remarks about Standard language (and some of its speakers) in Afrikaans before I expand on my all manner of ways. The choice of the perspectives on Kaaps Afrikaans. It is varieties in which (theoretically putative not unusual at intervals to hear sharp supra-dialect) Standard Afrikaans was public comment on the continued status established, the selection processes for of Standard Afrikaans. From formal and in- and exclusion were not value free. informal comments one often gains the It was sometimes aimed in such a way impression that on the one hand Standard that significant sections of the Afrikaans- language is elevated to an untouchable speaking community, mostly non-white gem that, by way of speaking, should speakers were continuously excluded. be defended until death. On the other Both our discussion, today, as well as this hand, one hears a demand that the ongoing debate, are enough proof that standard language must be expanded so important questions are being raised that socially and politically marginalised about the future and general acceptance varieties can be sensibly standardised. By of Standard Afrikaans. the way, in the midst of all these views, I do not hear a single opinion promoting the total rejection of Standard Afrikaans. KAAPS AFRIKAANS This 2012 symposium, I presume, therefore wants to promote firstly an Kaaps Afrikaans is the result of the awareness of a specific regional variety earliest language adaptations which (and language varieties in general) and took place in South Africa since the secondly, determine the processes of 17th century. It is also this form of Cape re-standardisation. Dutch, then called Hottentot Dutch, I would like to repeat my view that which took shape in South African I have stated elsewhere, namely that literature since the first decades of the Standard Afrikaans is an exceptional 19th century. Even though this language achievement (cf. Willemse 2012:66). form in the early years was subject The codification of Afrikaans grammar, to ridicule, there were observers like the compilation of several general Hubertus Elffers who considered it in and technical dictionaries, as well as his little textbook The Englishman’s guide the expression of Standard Afrikaans to the speedy and easy acquirement of Cape in the media, education, the justice Dutch (1908) as “a speech unalloyed with © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 Soppangheid vir Kaaps 75 foreign elements, which provides easy Kaaps, and its antecedent Cape- vent for all sentiments and every feeling, Dutch, is probably the most stigmatised though confined to the narrow limits of a Afrikaans variety. It is associated with, for patois” (quoted in Davids 2011:87). The example, the so-called ‘typical humour of point Elffers makes, that this language the coloured person’. Think of the many form encompasses people’s whole lives, Gatiepie jokes where the protagonist is is relevant to me. often given the inherent ability to utter Adam Small would formulate a witticisms, sometimes indicating insight similar insight nearly seventy years later and commentary. Our Gatiepie is often, in his foreword to a revised edition of his like the Blackface figure of American collection Kitaar my kruis (1973). Even pop culture, portrayed as the socially though his verdict is poetic hyperbole inferior Other. In the dominant imaging, (can the first human cry be in any the Kaaps speaker is considered naïve, language?), it makes sense to quote it shufflingly submissive, and half-skilled here in full: with an inability to understand or Kaaps is ’n taal in die sin dat dit die appreciate complexity. volle lot en noodlot van die mense The version of colloquial language wat dit praat, dra: die volle lot, hulle in informal orthographies in the South volle lewe ‘met alles wat daarin is’; African literature extends back to the ’n taal in die sin dat die mense wat beginning of the 19th century when dit praat, hul eerste skreeu in die Charles Boniface performed his De lewe skreeu in hierdie taal, al die nieuwe ridderorde of De temperantisten transaksies van hul lewens beklink (1832) and Andrew Geddes Bain in hierdie taal, en hul doodsroggel his Kaatje Kekkelbek, or Life among the roggel in hierdie taal. Kaaps is nie Hottentots (1838). Already in De nieuwe ’n grappigheid of snaaksigheid nie, ridderorde the Khoi characters, Manus maar ’n taal (Small 1973: 9). Kalfachter and Grietje Drilbouten, were portrayed as comical and saucy. These Kaaps is a language in the sense that stereotypical linkages would not really it carries the whole fate and destiny of change over the years. the people who speak it: the whole fate, This attitude originates in the their whole life ‘with everything therein’; political and social imbalances of our a language in the sense that the people society. Kaaps and its predecessors were who speak it, give their first cry in this spoken by people who were not in the life in this language, all the transactions dominant stratum of society. What the of their lives are concluded in this norm is, and whose language form is language, their death rattle is rattled in considered polished and acceptable, this language. Kaaps is not a joke or a is determined by social power and comedy, but a language (Small 1973: economic interest. This stigmatisation 9). thus initially takes place from outside. When Boniface and Bain wrote their Our discussion today can, in the texts, they founded a discourse where light of Elffers and Small, not be about non-Cape-Dutch speakers were linked to language form as language form only, a low social order, comicality, stupidity because the recognition of people in our and the despised language variety. social dispensation is in the final instance Fortunately, there is another side a matter of underlying importance. to this. The speakers do not themselves © Willemse and CMDR. 2016 76 WILLEMSE make this link. In fact, we have a good first cases of language disempowerment example of how speakers of this language take place in the classroom. This variety consider their language form. We language disempowerment in the face see this when the form of Kaaps which of the reigning standard language is not today is known as Arabic Afrikaans, is a matter limited only to South Africa or used. Achmat Davids in his important Afrikaans. Just think of the continual study, The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims debates about the acceptance of language (2011), convincingly indicates how this varieties reigning in the USA or the creolised form of European, Southeast Caribbean islands (cf. Alexander (1980); Asian and indigenous languages was Hairston (1992); Hollie (2001); Kynard used with soppangheid, dignity, in (2007); Molloy (2007); Smitherman everyday interaction in the madrassah (1991); Toohey (1986); and Wilson and the mosque.
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